Dear God,
I come to you as a humble and sinful man this morning. But it is not for myself that I pray, but for the country of which I am a part, and the people who live here. It is for all of us living in America that I ask your forgiveness on this day.
(cont.)
God, as a nation we have done, and continue to do terrible things. Even as I speak our soldiers are killing and being killed in a war zone far from our country, many not even understanding for what it is that they are killing and dying, destroying and being destroyed, both physically and spiritually. Forgive us for not having had the strength or the courage or the wisdom to prevent what is happening to them, and to the people of the countries who suffer their presence, and the consequence of our invasions. Forgive our nation and its people for this tragedy which we did not work hard enough to prevent.
Forgive those of us, also, who pursue the material things of this world merely for themselves, at the expense of their obligation to everyone who is less fortunate: the poor, the sick, the hungry, the abandoned, the psychologically damaged, and the spiritually weak. We live in a culture that values “ME” and “What I Want” and “What I Can Get” above all other values, with some of us even insisting that you approve of such nonsense, but that is no excuse for our neglect of those who suffer in our midst.
It is certainly no excuse for what happened to the Gulf Coast in Katrina, where we allowed our government to abandon, and then allowed corporations to profit, off the misery of people who lost everything. We should have been marching in the streets demanding action, but instead too many of us gave a few dollars to charity, or sent a few household items to the survivors, and then too many of us put the suffering of those victims from our beautiful minds. Even worse, we allowed our government to “move on” to other priorities, such as war and defense contracts, and pretty, empty speeches about all the good we had done. Forgive us for that.
And God, forgive those of us who take your name in vain. I do not mean the occasional outburst where someone asks you to damn something, or screams “Jesus Christ” in a fit of pique. I know that you in your infinite understanding recognize that such outbursts of colorful language (if you will pardon the euphemism, do not really merit your scorn. Human beings are, after all, human. You understand and love us despite the occasional swear words that erupt from our lips. Perhaps it even makes you smile on occasion if the combination of curses is creative enough. I understand you like creativity.
No, what I am speaking of is those of us who take your name and use it as a justification for all the terrible things that they do, and that our nation has done. Who turn your blessing into a patriotic war banner. Who believe that any lie, any slander, any false witness against others is permitted if it advances what they believe are your purposes.
Those who take your name as a reason to kill innocent people in an Arab country because they worship you under the name of Allah, rather than Jesus. Those who broadcast your name before the multitudes on television in order to make a profit and live in heavenly mansions here on earth. Those who believe that science and scientists are devils, failing to understand that it is your gift of our reason and our curiosity that leads scientists to seek out and explore the processes of life, the universe and everything.
But most of all, those who take your name as a reason to hate and despise their fellow human beings, merely because they are different. I know that this is a problem throughout the world, with so-called believers in you, however they perceive you, as thinking that their belief is special and privileged. Believers who then feel that their faith entitles them to look down on other human beings, or even in the extreme case, to murder them, merely because these “others” do not share the beliefs of the believer, or worship you in the same way, or read a different sacred book than the one that they read.
So, in this case, I ask you not merely to forgive our nation and its “believers,” but the peoples of all nations who abandon the great spiritual teachings of compassion, justice, charity and love for all humanity so that they can feed their hate and bloodlust, and wage holy wars against the “infidels” or the “heathens” or the “barbarians” or “secular humanists” or, simply, anyone they imagine to be an “unbeliever.”
My list could go on and on of things for which we, as a nation, deserve forgiveness, but most of all, God, please forgive us for our fear and cowardice. After the attacks of 9/11/2001, we allowed our fear to drive us, and we allowed those willing to take advantage of that fear to manipulate us toward ends that were unworthy of our nation, and of the people we can be when we are at our best. Driven by our fears, we have forgotten who we are. To use the catchphrase of a fictional character from Stephen King’s novels we have “forgotten the face of our fathers” and in so doing we have forgotten what is most important to us. We, as a nation, have stood by while our leaders have thrown away our liberties and our freedoms, and we, as a nation, have enabled monsters among us to torture, imprison, murder and lie in our names.
Dear God, I ask not merely forgiveness for this, our gravest sin, but also for your gift of the necessary wisdom and courage to correct these terrible injustices, and remove the criminals who rule us over us as if they were tyrants, and we, not a free people, but merely serfs, peons, expendable parts in an unholy and blasphemous enterprise of their own devise. As a nation we have stood by too long while these murderers and vandals committed their crimes. I pray that we can face them down, and take away their unwarranted power, beginning this November.
Of this I beseech you, whether you are the God of Christians or Muslims or Jews, or of whatever religion or creed, or no God at all, but merely the better part of each of us here on earth struggling to live a just, moral and decent life,
Amen.
